Infrastructure Matters for Government Clouds

A strong technology foundation is essential for hybrid, multicloud environments.

Government Cloud Computing Takeaways:

  • Federal, state, and local governments are all shifting to flexible hybrid, multi-cloud computing to provide better citizen services at lower cost.

  • Intel® technologies for government cloud computing span compute, memory, storage, and networking.

  • Government clouds powered by Intel® technologies are designed to support agility, security features, resilience, high performance, and efficiency.

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Governments at all levels, from federal to state and local, are shifting computing needs to cloud infrastructure. Their goal: to provide better and faster services to citizens with flexible, scalable, and cost-effective technology.

Often, the best cloud computing strategy employs a hybrid, multi-cloud architecture. This requires tools and technologies to manage workloads across private clouds and public clouds operated by various cloud service providers (CSPs).

Infrastructure makes the critical difference in realizing the full benefits of cloud computing. An extensive portfolio of Intel® technologies helps make the most of cloud value. With the right cloud computing solutions, governments can also tackle AI problems that require massive amounts of computing power.

Ultimately, Intel supports the edge-to-cloud life cycle with a range of compute, memory, storage, and network technologies that all contribute to transforming data into valuable information.

Government Cloud Adoption

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) lists the five essential characteristics of cloud computing as “on-demand service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service."1

To achieve this vision, the 2019 U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, known as Cloud Smart, drives the acceleration of federal government cloud adoption. Cloud Smart provides a migration path that’s designed to reduce costs, improve security, and deliver solutions that improve citizens’ lives.

Many government organizations implement a hybrid, multi-cloud environment to manage their computing needs. This gives agencies the flexibility to scale quickly via public cloud services while keeping mission-critical applications on infrastructure they own. A hybrid, multi-cloud environment usually involves different security levels for workloads. By balancing cost, privacy, and availability, IT can deploy application environments that make the most sense for their organization.

Infrastructure to Optimize Cloud Value

To achieve their mission in the cloud, government IT teams must recognize that infrastructure matters. Intel works with developers and CSPs to help governments optimize their use of Intel® technologies, whether via on-premises infrastructure or public cloud services. Many popular CSPs offer instances based on Intel® technologies that align with federal compliance standards and keep governments ahead of the technology curve.

Clouds based on Intel® technologies are designed to provide the following key benefits:

  • Agility: Platform innovations and hardware-enhanced virtualization across compute, storage, and network deliver a high-quality experience.
  • Trust: Hardware-enhanced security features help thwart malicious exploits while maintaining workload integrity and performance.
  • Resiliency: Capabilities designed to help recover quickly from malicious exploits promote operational continuity.
  • Performance: Workload-optimized performance includes built-in AI acceleration.
  • Efficiency: Each workload has individual requirements. This can create a cost advantage when negotiating with public CSPs.

Intel provides solutions that help governments or their service providers implement controls that map to compliance.

The Intel Portfolio for Cloud Computing

Intel® technologies for government cloud computing provide a solid foundation for almost any application with trusted infrastructure to help protect against security threats.

Compliance: Federal Government Cloud Security

Cybersecurity is a key area of concern for government organizations. Many agencies must meet a strict set of cloud computing regulations and security requirements. Intel provides solutions that help governments or their service providers implement controls that map to cloud compliance. The most critical government cloud security frameworks are FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF).

The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requires each federal agency to implement a complete information security plan. FedRAMP establishes standards for validating cloud-computing services for FISMA compliance.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework provides a uniform strategy to protect data and identity, detect threats, and respond and recover as quickly as possible. Intel participated in the development of this framework and continues to help organizations align with its requirements. Governments worldwide also follow NIST-recommended guidance and standards.

Cloud-Driven AI

From neural networks to big data analytics, cloud AI tackles problems that take a lot of processing power. Intel® technologies for cloud computing handle a range of government AI applications. For example, the European Space Agency and partners are developing the first European satellite with AI technology, including the Intel® Movidius™ Myriad™ 2 Vision Processing Unit (VPU). This AI technology filters out images with excessive cloud cover to ensure better data quality and more efficient delivery of Earth images.2 Scientists are also investigating potential applications of AI to diagnose and treat infectious diseases.3 Other applications range from chatbots to smart city analytics to drug design.

The Edge-to-Cloud Life Cycle

Intel® technologies collect, move, store, and analyze data at every stage of its life cycle, from devices at the edge to the cloud and data center. Clouds powered by Intel® technologies provide the agile and resilient computing that governments need to provide the best possible services to citizens.